Releasing a new version of software takes a lot of steps... finding the next version number (and making sure you didn't already use that version number before), making sure your changelog is updated, making sure your "make dist" results in a tarball that builds, commiting changes (with updated version number), tagging, and uploading the tarball somewhere.

Or maybe more steps. Or not some of the above. Maybe you forgot something! And maybe you manage multiple projects, and each project has a different release process.

This is all a pain in the ass.

You want to be hacking, not jumping through hoops.

Your contributors want to see their patches actually make it into a release, which won't happen if you're afraid of releases.

Tweak away. You may want to add the "UploadCPAN" step at the end of steps, as it isn't included by default. It requires cpan-upload or cpan-upload-http installed.

The comma-separate steps are ShipIt::Step subclasses. Each one may or may accept additional config, as you can see the CheckChangeLog step does. (although CheckChangeLog by default figures it out, how your changelog files are named)

All values have sensible defaults, and any missing/extra keys generate errors.